Charlie Glickman on How We Identify Ourselves, Outside of the Gender Binary

Part of what got me to read this article was the title, Cisgenderfluid. For those outside the gender studies world, cis refers to a biological male or female, while trans refers to a a person who has adopted their natural gender in opposition to the one in which they were born. The terms cis and trans come from the world of chemistry.

I was drawn to this article because I have often identified myself over the last 2-3 years as cisgenderfluid, not knowing this was not an actual term in use. I live as a cis gendered man but experience myself as gender fluid:

Sometimes we feel male, and sometimes female. Often, we're someplace in between...or else we're both or neither . . .

Charlie Glickman wrote a brief but interesting post on this topic, and I guess he gets credit for adding the term cisgenderfluid to the lexicon of gender studies.

Cisgenderfluid

Charlie Glickman
Mar, 08, 2014

“How do you identify?”

That’s often a tough question for me to answer. As a general rule, I’ve shifted away from identifying as anything because I’ve found that when I do, it can be hard to let go of that self-identity when things change. In my experience, life brings lots of surprises that are difficult enough to navigate without adding the challenges of changing an identity. When I hear people say things like “I can’t be attracted to that person. I’m straight/gay/queer/lesbian/kinky/vanilla/etc.”, I see how their identity crisis is complicating their situation and I try to avoid setting myself up like that.

At the same time, there are words that I sometimes use to describe myself because they convey some useful information. Some of them are: queer, kinky, poly, able-bodied, white, Jewish, pagan, atheist, male, and cisgender. But many of these have been mutable over time.

In the last couple of years, I’ve been playing more with gender. I’ve always run a lot of yin energy and I’ve had a lot of fun exploring how that plays out in my life. On an energetic level, I feel very balanced between male and female and I like how that works for me. At the same time, using words like “genderfluid” to describe myself hasn’t felt accurate. I’ve called myself cisgender because it seems to accurately describe my baseline. I’m very present in my masculine body and in being a man. I’m also very aware of how I move through the world and that I receive the privilege that cisgender folks accrue. I know that receiving cisgender privilege feels like a misgendering to some people, but it doesn’t feel like that to me (even while I resent living in a world that gives me that privilege while denying it to so many others). I don’t experience tension or conflict between how I feel physically and how I feel energetically and emotionally, and I don’t think that transgender fits how I feel. So how do I describe myself when I’m simultaneously a cisgender man and genderfluid?

Obviously, by creating a new word: cisgenderfluid. It honors the cisgender aspects of my life while making room for the gender-creative parts of my psyche and my life. It acknowledges that I don’t face the same challenges that most trans* and other gender-transgressive folks do, and recognizes that I don’t fit into the standard box that masculinity comes in. It gives me the freedom to play with gender and to queer it, and it provides a foundation on which to stand. It makes room for the fact that my baseline is cisgender while creating space for me to step away from that when I feel like it. It expands the conversation about gender in some ways that I really enjoy, and it recognizes that I often occupy the space of both/and.

I’ve been talking with friends about this over the last few weeks and the more I have, the more this word feels like a good description for where I am at this moment in my life. I think there’s a lot of room here to play in and I’m going to check it out for a while. And if you’re curious about these terrains or if you think you might want to explore them, I invite you to come and join me.

Jill Dolan - Do We Need a More Nuanced View of Sexuality?

Writing for Alternet, Jill Dolan responds to the latest LGBT controversy that arose when Sex in the City actress Cynthia Nixon said in an New York Times Magazine interview that she chose to be a lesbian. Here is a brief summary of the issue:

LGBT, feminist and queer theorists such as UC-Berkeley’s Judith Butler and University of Michigan’s Gayle Rubin propose that gender and sexuality in fact aren’t innate, but are chimeras constructed as indisputable fact by ideology and long-established cultural norms. Nixon’s announcement follows their logic. She had a long-term relationship with a man; now she’s in a committed relationship with a woman. She says jokingly that “gay is better,” but that she chose among sexual practices and relationships is most important. 

Here is what she actually said in the interview and, for the record, I agree with her 100%.

“I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.” Her face was red and her arms were waving. “As you can tell,” she said, “I am very annoyed about this issue. Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate. I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with.”

The LGBT community is afraid - and rightfully so - that for Nixon to declare that her sexual relationship is a choice is to allow the conservatives to say, "See, it is a choice, and it's an immoral choice that deserves no recognition under law.

The gay community holds to the biology argument as strongly as the conservatives hold to the immorality argument - both are essentially fundamentalist arguments that hold to the belief that sexual identity is a binary, you're either gay or you're straight, and it's not a choice.

But it's not a binary - as noted in the article from Dilon, there is a large part of our gender identity and sexual preference that is socially constructed. When identity is socially constructed, there is a uniqueness to each person's relational experience, environmental influence, and biology. There are no either/or constructs in this wider perspective.

Dilon's article includes the following passage in support of Nixon:

Nixon’s insistence that she’s making a choice about her sexuality is doubly radical. She’s refusing to submit to conservative constructions of sexuality that make heterosexuality the only appropriate expression of desire and she’s advocating for a rights-based argument that isn’t rooted in biology but in practice and experience. The old models of lifelong, unwavering sexual orientation no longer adequately describe the multiplicity and fluidity of sexual practices and choices.

Exactly. Sexual preference and expression is much more fluid than most people know or - in the case of conservatives - are willing to accept about themselves.